When the arguments subside, Edgar will get his plaque

Updated 10:00 pm, Tuesday, January 5, 2010

After bonding with more than 60,000 Seahawks fans Sunday at Qwest Field, where he raised the 12th Man flag, Ken Griffey Jr. bonded less overtly but no less sincerely with every single Mariners fan.

"Edgar," said Griffey, standing near the flagpole and forcing his voice over the din, "has my vote."

Unfortunately Griffey, despite his momentary prominence astride the football canyon, had no influence on the Seahawks game, or whether Edgar Martinez made the Hall of Fame on his first try.

Those that do have influence over the baseball honor failed to bond Wednesday with Martinez and his masses, thus assuring the naysayers on their next visit here of a dinner with Tim Eyman, Howard Schultz and Kerry Killinger -- Seattle's version of hell.

Personal and team allegiances aside, gaining 36.5 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers of America in his first year of eligibility was for Martinez neither surprising nor especially disappointing, despite being well short of the required minimum of 75 percent.

Martinez's candidacy is probably going to be a slog of probably the full 15 years allowable, primarily because a segment of the voters is at odds with a rule of baseball rather than the merits of Martinez's work.

Some don't believe the DH is an enshrinable position, despite its authorized place in the game -- at least the American League half -- since 1973. Which is the chief beef of Griffey and many other Martinez fans.

"There's no reason to be upset that he's a DH," Griffey said. "If he's the best DH there ever was, it would be impossible to hold him out of the Hall of Fame.

"It's a position that baseball created. You can't punish Paul Molitor for the rule -- he had 1,200 games as a DH -- then elect him."

Griffey is correct. Molitor's election indeed set the precedent, although he had more games as a position player than did Martinez. Although the lone elected player Wednesday, Andre Dawson, was a worthy choice primarily because he fit the classic mold of a five-tool player, there is no minimum requirement for tools possessed. Anyone who can remember the game of Minnesota slugger Harmon Killebrew knows that the Hall in open to one-tool guys.

In fact, so few are the standards for election, in contrast with the near-infinite supply of statistical arguments to support an argument in any direction, that it can be fairly said that the baseball Hall election system is nearly as flawed as the American electoral college system -- although such a comparison is meant as no insult to my brothers and sisters of the pressbox.

(Since some asked: I was an eligible voter, but declined to participate, due to the quaint belief that sportswriters should not make sports news. But I have no quarrel with writers who vote; I just don't like being put in the position, real or imagined, of being a guardian of the game.)

The legitimacy of the DH position should be an issue beyond the purview of the discussion, because baseball's rules trump personal preference. Just as baseball said players from the 19th century are eligible for the Hall despite substantive changes since then to the game's rules and styles, Martinez's premier exploitation of the position should not be held against him.

But since debate over each Hall vote is an amusing pastime for many sports fans, let's offer up one comparative statistic that flatters Martinez in a most compelling way and has nothing to do with the DH debate.

Friend and former P-I colleague Steve Rudman compiled a list of players who had minimum career averages of .300 batting, .400 on-base percentage and .500 slugging percentage.

As the chart shows, the prodigious list of just 13 includes many of the game's greatest hitters, all of whom are in the Hall. The only two who aren't in are Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose eligibility ran into a little gambling problem in 1920, and Martinez.

Baseball fans are well acquainted with the premium the Hall places on longevity. Martinez's candidacy will always suffer because he didn't reach the majors until age 24 and had only 92 game appearances in his first three seasons before becoming a Mariners fixture at 27.

Nevertheless, he was by statistical measure and anecdotal observation of peers and media observers, one of the greatest hitters in the game's history. If the purpose of halls of fame is to celebrate the enterprise and honor the legacy of high achievers, and in more recent years emphasize character as a reflector of high ideals, then debates about secondary issues will fall away.

Martinez can and should make it. But in the peculiar fashion of this electoral system, the process could take almost as long as his career.